Through These Trying Times
by Writing Epistles
Summary: Set in 1939, follow the lives of Anne and Gilbert's grandchildren as they grow up, go to college, and face World War II. This is based on the "Once of Ingleside" and "Comfort and Joy" universe.


Prologue

Her auburn tresses flew into her gray-green eyes, while everything else seemed to blur past them. She was running and couldn't stop, not that she wanted to try and force herself to do so just then. For the first time, but also not the last in her life, she felt the need to flee Ingleside. She needed to put as much distance between herself and the worried, anguished faces of her parents and aunts and uncles. Granddad had been seen to shake his head. Uncle Jem had set his jaw and refused to give up the fight. Aunt Faith refused to leave the sickroom to even get a little rest. Grandmother was trying to keep up a brave front, but Hope had seen the fear in her eyes. You could _always_ tell how Grandmother really felt if you looked just so into her eyes.

She ran past the mournful cries permeating from every hidden nook and cranny of Rainbow Valley and past the church where Grandfather Meredith had taken to his feeble, arthritic knees in prayer, She just _ran_, fleeing the one thought that wouldn't escape her mind: John-boy was dying.

He had complained of headache the previous morning as they met to walk to school together with Maddie and Lucy MacGowan and Graceful Anne. At lunch his face was flush with fever, and Mr. Palmer sent him home to Ingleside. By the time Hope stopped by after school to check on him, his body was in agonizing pain, especially his left leg, and he had lost his stomach on numerous occasions.

Polio. One only had to glance at almost every recent medical journal lying about Ingleside to know what plagued poor John-boy. Seeing him in such a state flooded her mind with memories she wished to remain dormant forever; those of her own mother slowly dying in a hospital nine years previously. That woman had been very little like the smiling, happy, witty mother she preferred to remember. _Was she to remember John-boy in such a way_?

John Knox Blythe wasn't really like other twelve year-old boys. Like his Uncle Walter, he was poetic, a dreamer, and would never harm a soul. That was probably one of the reasons Hope sometimes shared secrets with him that she shared with no one else. He was so much like her father probably had been before The Great War, before losing his memory from an injury sustained at Courcelette, and before experiencing the good and bad things in life. Now he was dying. He was dying at Ingleside, and all she could do was run.

She continued to run until there was no more red earth beneath her feet to run upon. Without knowing it, she was at the Harbour Light, teetering over a bluff, thinking she might just fall when a firm hand grabbed and pulled her to safety. She turned toward the person who pulled her from the edge and crumpled into his arms only saying, "John-boy's going die."

He held her for an unidentified amount of time, allowing her to cry as much as she needed. Hope wasn't one to show her tears to the public, or anyone else for the matter. She probably wasn't even aware of her tendency to shed her tears in private, but he had known her since the day she and her twin brother, Tenny, were born. From that day on, she had been a point of interest to him. He sought her out in crowds, always searching for her smile and that flash of _something_ in her eyes that made her unique. Just as Hope wasn't fully aware of her desire to grieve in private, he wasn't aware of his attraction to her. It just _was_ and always had been.

He told himself he wished to tell _all_ of his friends goodbye that evening, but in actuality he wished to tell _her_ goodbye especially. In the excitement of John's illness, most everyone forgot that there was to have been a party for Jacob MacGowan that evening in Rainbow Valley, for the next morning he was leaving Glen St Mary, leaving Prince Edward Island, and leaving Canada all together. He was going back to the country where he was born, back to the United States. His uncle, the Admiral, had helped him gain admittance into the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It would be four years at least probably before he would see any of them again. So, when he witnessed Hope's flight from Ingleside, naturally – _instinctively_, he followed.

The setting sun in the western horizon hid behind some grayish clouds, turning them pink instead. The contrast of the pink sky against the blue ocean made for a beautiful picture, yet Jacob's deep brown eyes only focused on Hope.

With an optimism that only the youthful posses, Jacob tried to alleviate some of Hope's fear by telling her, "People _do_ survive Polio. Why, look at my soon-to-be Commander In Chief, the President of the United States. He had Polio, and he's one of the most powerful men in the world."

"John-boy isn't strong like I'm sure Mr. Roosevelt is," she quietly admitted, unable to look Jacob in the eyes. She hated to admit, at least in part, what was often said about John Blythe.

Jacob glanced again at the sunset and watched the pinkish orange orb disappear into the great beyond, thinking quietly and deliberately before stating, "Maybe, just maybe John-boy is all the stronger because of the way most everyone does perceive him. It takes something greater than physical strength to not fall in with the ways most of us boys act. Every day he puts up with taunts of being a sissy and such with his head held high. I honestly don't think they even bother him anymore. As you're now aware, physical strength can be ripped away with very little notice, but strength of character is impervious to our human ailments."

Hope sat down on a nearby bench and at that moment, looked at Jacob MacGowan differently that she ever had before. Always rather handsome with his Cherokee Indian, Irish, German, Huguenot, and Scottish blood that mixed together giving him a fine nose, soft dark brown eyes, nutmeg hair, and only one dimple that appeared on his right cheek, he seemed so much older than his sixteen years just then. It occurred to her that he was to leave on the morrow, and that revelation saddened her all the more, though she couldn't yet understand why.

"You leave tomorrow." It wasn't a question, but a statement quietly uttered.

"Yes, I do. I hate to leave now, but I cannot give up my place at the Academy."

"No, you mustn't do that," she agreed, knowing that a career in the US Navy was both Jacob's dream, and his only chance to really make something of his life. Resigned to _everything_, she added, "_Nothing_ will ever be the same here again."

Again, Jacob took in what Hope was saying with his quiet deliberation decided to lighten the mood a bit. "You won't even miss me, because you'll be in Charlottetown studying at Queens with Tenny and the gang."

"But we'll be home on weekends, and not everyone's going together. Maddie's staying here and going to Four Winds High School."

_That_ was something Jacob didn't need to be reminded of. His siblings were lucky to be able to attend the new high school in Four Winds District, but they lacked certain advantages that their friends were able to take for granted. Their parents worked hard on their farm, and no one ever went without, but there was no extra money for anything. Of course in 1934, people everywhere were experiencing the same hardships. Still, it was a sore subject for the quiet young man who stood at the Harbour Light with Hope Blythe that day. After all, he had a rich grandfather still living (_from last his mother heard from her brothers who still speak to her_) in the United States who could at least help some, if not for his unwarranted hatred for Gideon MacGowan solely because he had the gall to marry his only daughter.

"I know," he whispered.

Hope inhaled a deep breath of cool, salty air and revealed one of her deepest secrets. "Sometimes I still close my eyes and remember back when we were all so little, living in Oklahoma. Dad didn't know he was Walter Blythe, we lived at Dovedale, you and Maddie, Lucy, and baby Nicky lived not far, and Mama was alive. I love my life here. I love being a Blythe, having this ridiculously large family. I love Mum and My-Joy, but I often miss those days. They were so simple, so happy."

Jacob laughed at the memory of that life they had all left behind, long before the Dust Bowl ravaged that area. "We were all so very young, so innocent. I miss those days too. I miss Aunt Katie. I was the only babe at Dovedale for so long. She spoiled me rotten, waiting for you, her Abigail and Tenny."

"Mama," Katie said introspectively. "Seeing John-boy so ill today reminded me of when..."

Seeing the tears well up in her gray-green eyes and knowing how difficult it would be just for her to finish her sentence, he lightly pressed a finger to her lips which were surprisingly soft. "I know. I know, but I have faith that John will live."

He brought his other hand up to cup Hope's pointed, little chin, and needed to feel the softness of those lips pressed against his own. Softly, sweetly, Jacob MacGowan kissed Hope Blythe and held her to him until the noise of the Harbour Light turning flickering on broke them apart.

Silently, they walked not hand in hand, but closely back to Ingleside, where Jacob took his leave of all the Blythes, Fords, Merediths, and Douglases there. He left the next morning to depart for Annapolis, Hope started classes at Queens in September, and John Knox Blythe lived.


End file.
